“I heard you.” I keep leafing through my magazine.
“Something stinks in here,” he says.
“Didn’t smell before you walked in,” I answer. It’s an oldie but a goodie.
“Oh yeah?” he asks, which is old but not so good.
“Get out unless you’re buying, Antony,” Grandpa says, walking in the back way. It’s the oldest and the best.
I’m smiling, feet up, reading my magazine when Dave arrives. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“I’m sitting here thinking I’m not entirely uncool.”
“Will you be doing that all day? My dad’s gone for the afternoon. Mum’s given me time off for good behavior.”
“What are you going to do with your time off?” I ask.
“Teach Charlie Duskin how to drive.”
Driving looks so easy when someone else is doing it—you put your foot on the pedal, turn the wheel a bit, and sing with the radio. The only song I’m singing today is “Shit.” Occasionally I mix it up with a rendition of “Fuck” from the start of summer.
“Shit. Fuck. Shit.”
“Charlie, look out!” Dave yells as we jerk across the paddock. “The fence, shit, brake. Brake!”
“What foot?” I scream.
“The right!” He holds on to the side of the truck as we fly into the fence. “Your other right.”
“Sorry, Dave.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, twisting his neck around. “Just a bit of whiplash.”
“I told you I wouldn’t be able to do it.”
“No one gets it the first time.”
“Except for every kid in the country.”
“You should see Luke behind the wheel. Stop giving yourself a hard time.”
“Sorry.”
“And stop saying sorry. I’d rather you told me get lost than sorry.”
“Get lost, then,” I say, and start the car. “I’m driving!” I yell after we’ve lapped the paddock three times. “I am driving. Do you think your dad’ll be angry about the fence?”
“Do another lap. Let’s put off telling him as long as possible.”
If the day had a sound track, the main song would thump with a backbeat of laughter. It would be written and sung by Charlie Duskin. It would be loud.
But it wouldn’t be as loud as Mr. Robbie when he gets back early. “What the bloody hell were you doing in the back paddock, anyway?” he yells, and I hate the way he spits words at Dave.
“Practicing my driving,” Dave says.
“How did you hit the fence?”
“I got confused, between the accelerator and the brake.”
“You’ll have to pay for it. And you can spend this afternoon fixing it.”
“Yep.”
“You’re an idiot, Dave.”
“Yep.”
“You haven’t cut the grass in that paddock like I asked you, either. Snakes’ll be crawling through it if you don’t do it soon.”
The whole time Mr. Robbie’s shouting, digging with his voice, I hide like Dave said I should. I want to walk out there and tell him Dave wasn’t the idiot, I was, and by the way, neither of us are idiots. While I’m out there, I want to yell that it wasn’t Dave who stole the car, either. I come out of my hiding place too late, though. Mr. Robbie’s gone.
“Go home, Charlie,” Dave says, face bent against the wind that’s starting now. “It’ll rain soon. I have to fix the fence.”
He slumps on the ground outside the barn, and I turn my back. His knees are pulled to his chin, and his head is down, and I walk away because that’s what he told me to do. I stop at the gate, staring at the fence around Dave’s yard. I hear Mum telling me to go back.
Dave’s got his face to the wall when I sit next to him. He’s half crying, half holding it in. “I said go home, Charlie. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“So don’t talk,” I say. And I hold his hand while he washes the last sixteen years out.
We sit there for ages. Dave’s the first one to speak. “Your dad’s not much better than mine. How come he hardly talks to you?” He and Rose are the only ones who ever said it like that before, just like it is. “I guess he misses Mum. He doesn’t talk much to anyone.”
“When did she die?”
“When I was nine.”
“That’s a long time to be sad.”
And maybe he’s talking about me and maybe he’s talking about Dad, or maybe he means both of us. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that someone else other than me is saying that something’s wrong. More wrong than her dying.
I stare across the paddocks that seem to stretch forever. Dave grips my hand tighter because now it’s my turn to cry. “I always wonder why some paddocks are green and some are dry when they’re right next to each other,” I say.
“Different things going on underneath,” Dave explains. “Some have got better irrigation.” It makes sense in a way I can’t explain.
“You don’t have to help me fix this,” Dave says, standing at the fence.
“I broke it. I’m fixing it.”
“You have any idea how to mend a fence?” he asks.
“No. But I can learn.”
“All right, go back to the truck and get me more nails. Put on the radio while you’re there.”
I switch on some music and turn it up loud. I can’t find the nails. I look in the rearview mirror to see if Dave’s close enough to yell to, but he’s lost in the long grass. From where I’m standing, I’m completely alone in a sea of burnt green.
“Charlie, hurry up!” Dave yells across the paddock.
“I’m coming. I can’t find the nails.”
“Charlie,” he calls again, and this time I hear it properly, a black blanket that spreads over the day.
“Dave?” My voice rises with every step. “Dave?” My feet trip, and I fall on the ground next to him.
“Charlie, calm down.” He smiles, sweat forming glass circles on his white skin. “I’m fine. Remember, panic is bad for a snakebite victim.”
“Snakebite. Shit. Should I suck the poison out?”
“Remember, panic is bad. Start the truck and drive me to the house. It’ll be easier for you to go out the side gate and come around by the road.”
“I don’t have a license.”
“You’re willing to cut me and suck the poison out of my blood, but you won’t drive on the road without a license?” he asks, and pulls himself up on my shoulder. “You’re crazy.”
“You’re a little slow if you’re just working that one out,” I say, but neither of us laughs.
I haul Dave across the field and into the truck. My shoulders ache, but I can’t stop. His voice fades as his body gets heavier, dragging me under where I don’t want to go. I’m drowning under the weight of him, ice-cold in the heat of the day.
“Turn the ignition, Charlie,” he says. “Start the engine.” It won’t work. “Dave, it won’t go. Dave?” The birds are screaming overhead. I turn the key and put my foot flat on the pedal, but there’s nothing. I’m doing everything I did before, but it’s dead. Even then I know it’s too late. I keep my foot flat on the pedal till Dave’s face turns the color of clouds. That’s when I realize: there are no birds. Only me, screaming for help. And Dave, quiet as death.
“Stop being so scared all the time!” Dahlia yelled the week before Jeremy’s party. “Join a band. Talk to people. Stop acting like I’m doing something wrong because I’m hanging out with Louise.”
She’s right. I need to stop being so scared of things ending and do something to make them start. I know how to do this. I learned it in school. I put the seat back. I make sure Dave’s airway’s clear. I give him mouth-to-mouth and check his pulse. It’s a shaking bird beneath his neck. “Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.” I rip the sleeve off my shirt and wrap the cloth around his arm. I find some rope in the truck, grab a rock, and tie it to the horn so sound blares across the paddock. And I run. I run faster than I have ever done before, jerkin
g and heaving through the grass. Dave’s brother meets me halfway across the paddock.
“Snakebite!” explodes from my mouth, but I don’t stop. I keep running to the phone. He runs to Dave.
Mr. Robbie walks straight past Luke and me as though we’re not here. I’m glad Luke is; he can be a witness if Dave’s dad finishes the snake’s job. “I told you to cut that grass,” he says.
Luke pulls me out the door. We listen to their conversation from two chairs in the hallway. “I knew his dad gave him a hard time, but not like that,” Luke says, swinging one leg. “Dave can hardly talk, and the first thing he does is yell at him.”
“He’s scared,” I say. I smelled it in the sweat of his shirt as he walked past me.
“I don’t care,” Luke says. “I reckon Dave’s scared, too.”
Mr. Robbie stops talking, and so do we. Luke stares at the floor the whole time. He’s the first one to break the quiet. “Does Rose even miss me?”
“I think so. Maybe you should ask her.”
He shakes his head and keeps looking down. “You know, you can see yourself in this floor,” he says, and walks off, leaving me on my own in the corridor. I don’t feel on my own, though. I look into the shine of the floor and see someone who’s got more of a clue than she did yesterday. Mr. Robbie walks out to talk to the nurse. “You,” he says to me on the way past, “bloody flooded the engine, didn’t you?” I smile.
He’s so relieved, he’s been crying. He just doesn’t know the right way to say it. I guess there are a lot of people who don’t know the right thing to say. You don’t notice them so much because they pretend they do. Mr. Robbie should tell Dave that he loves him; he knows that. It’s like he can see the word on the floor but it’s slippery and awkward and he can’t get a grip on it.
Mrs. Robbie rushes in and grabs it straightaway. “Dave, I wasn’t home, I just got the message, thank God.…” She runs all her words together as she presses her face against his and grabs his hand.
Take a good look, Mr. Robbie. That’s how it’s done.
I’ve finally got my cousins off to sleep when Jenny from the caravan park rings the doorbell. “Your mum sent me, love. Dave Robbie’s been bitten by a snake.”
“Is he okay?”
“All we heard was he’s at the hospital. I’ll stay here. Your mum says ride your bike down there straightaway.”
The hospital’s at the edge of the freeway; I take every shortcut, and I’m glad I’m riding so fast because it means I can’t think of what’s waiting ahead. Luke’s outside when I get there. “Is he okay?”
“Snakebite. But they got him here in time.”
I feel sick from riding and relief. I sit on the grass, taking deep breaths. “Jelly legs,” I say to Luke.
He turns his back and unlocks his bike. “You can visit. Charlie’s in there, too. She saved him. You better ask her soon. Doesn’t look like she needs you anymore.” I watch him ride away.
And then there’s just me and a few ambulances and a sky that’s about to cave. I sit there waiting for my legs to stop shaking. Charlie walks out of the hospital. “He’s okay,” she says a few times before I really hear it.
“Luke said you saved him.”
“I gave him mouth-to-mouth.”
“Shame he was unconscious,” I tell her, and she laughs.
“I thought he was going to die. I really thought it.” We sit there thinking about a world without Dave.
“Thank God you were there.”
“Thank God I was.” She lies back on the grass and flings her arms wide. Like she can do what she wants without asking someone first. I lie back, too. After a while she dances her hands around in the air and says, “We’re all major chords.” We lie there a bit longer, thinking about that.
“The start of the summer feels ages ago,” I say. “I miss Luke,” I say. “You’re a legend for saving Dave,” I say.
“I am not entirely unlegend-like.” She drums a little more at the air. “I’m calling it. I’m an absolute legend.”
“I have to talk to you later, about something important.”
“About Luke?” she asks.
“About Luke and this place. About me. Meet me at the river after dinner.”
“Are you okay?”
I nod, and we stare at the sky a little longer. “You notice how the moon’s been coming out earlier and earlier lately? Like it’s saying, ‘Fuck the rules. I’m here.’”
“It must have something to do with the sun, though,” she says. “It doesn’t have light of its own, does it?”
“The moon’s got its own thing going on,” I say. “Cool and mysterious.”
She stares at it. “So it has.”
I get this feeling. Everything’s about to start.
I lie there playing major chords in the air below a cool and mysterious moon. I think about my next move. Mr. Robbie walks past. “Hey,” I call. “Can I have a ride?”
“Brave,” Rose says.
“See you at the river.” I run over to the truck.
He starts the engine, and we sit side by side, and it’s a different type of quiet again. It’s the quiet you get when you don’t know someone at all and you don’t have anything to lose by not talking. Dad and I sit in a different kind of quiet.
I have to find Dad and tell him what I did today. I have to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Shake him till he sees how I need him and how things between us have to change or what we’ve got will be dead.
I let myself imagine for a second what life would have been like if Dave had died today. I’d have to spend the rest of my life knowing that if I’d done things differently, I could have saved him. I’d have to bury today so deep that I’d never think about it again. It’d come back, though. It’d come back every time I liked someone or kissed them. It’d cover me in guilt every time I came back here.
I watch the patchy paddocks move past the window and they match up to make a picture but I can’t quite see what it is. Mr. Robbie stops outside the milk bar. “Thanks,” I say.
“Thank you,” he answers, and there’s something about love buried in his words. Before I get out, I tell him, “I stole the car. Dave was bringing it back so I wouldn’t get in trouble. I broke the fence, too.” I wave and shut the door.
Mrs. Wesson walks out of my front door as I’m about to walk in. I haven’t seen her since the last day of school. What she says is “Hello, Rose.”
What I hear is “Busted.”
“When did you get back?”
“It’s good to see you, too, Rose. I arrived home today. Now, I’ve got a question for you. Were you even going to tell them?”
“I was waiting for the right moment.”
“That moment has long passed. I might have been able to help, if you’d let me.” She nods back at the door. “Your parents are waiting.”
Mum starts as soon as she sees me. “You are grounded. You are grounded until you’re old and your teeth are sitting in a glass next to your bed and you’re wearing scuba suit underwear. And then, if I’m not dead, you’re grounded some more.” Anger sets fire to her skin. “You lied to us. Flat out lied!” she yells. “What were you planning on doing, running away and paying for the fees yourself?”
“It’s a scholarship,” I say.
“I know what it is. Mrs. Wesson told us. What I want to know is why you didn’t.”
“I tried. I asked if I could go on exchange. You were too busy cutting fucking carrots to listen properly. I asked about the scholarship and you wouldn’t even talk about it.”
“Don’t you fucking swear at me. I’m not stupid, Rose. That day at the caravan park was after you’d lied and cut school. Go to your room. Stay there till I call you out.”
“I won’t go to my room!” I yell. “I’m going to that school. It’s got the best science program in the state and I got in and I’m glad because it means I won’t be you, working my arse off at some shitty job.”
“That shitty job pays for your food.”
>
“Fuck you. I hang out the washing. I cook dinner when you’re working. I look after your sister’s kids.”
“That’s enough, Rose,” Dad says.
But it’s not enough. It’s the best feeling, yelling at her, smashing the air with things I’ve been thinking for years. “You work all the time. You don’t even read the paper anymore. I have nightmares where I end up like you. Pregnant and stuck here.”
Mum holds the back of the chair. Dad’s mouth is a circle. “I want to leave with Charlie at the end of the summer. I want to live with her and Mr. Duskin and go to school in Melbourne.”
Mum leans her head against her hand. “You won’t be going with Charlie at the end of the summer. I rang Mr. Duskin to make sure he knew that you two might be planning something.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. That you’d known about this scholarship since before school ended, that I thought you were desperate enough to do anything to get away.”
Her words sink in. I taste metal. “Don’t you get what you’ve done? Charlie will think I used her.”
“From what I can see you did use her, Rose. Take a good look at yourself. If she’s hurt, there’s one person to blame.”
“You had no right to tell her.”
“I had every right. I’m your mother.”
“Well, I always said Charlie Duskin was lucky.”
Mum walks into the kitchen. I walk out the front door. Through the living room window, I see Dad standing with his hands held out in front of him as though he were holding something that suddenly disappeared.
Dad’s sitting in the kitchen in front of a chocolate cake and a pot of tea when I get home. He’s heard. Mrs. Butler must have told him that I saved Dave, and he’s baked a cake to celebrate.